Three picture books about children brought up by same-sex and mixed race
couples are being pulped by the Singapore national library

And Tango Makes Three, a children's book based on the true story of two male penguins who raised a baby chick together in New York's Central Park Zoo, has won awards.

But the 2005 publication has also faced bans in more conservative parts of America, and now the national library of Singapore has made plans to destroy the book and two others because they are seen to promote homosexuality.

On Thursday, a spokesperson for Singapore's National Library Board (NLB) said copies of White Swan Express, about children who are adopted by straight, gay, single and mixed-race parents, would be pulped. Who's In My Family, which features gay couples will suffer the same fate.

The NLB, a network of 26 public libraries with a collection of five million books, says that the titles are against its "pro-family" stance and that decision has been reached after a complaint by a parent and an internal review.

The move has angered Singapore's arts and literary community, who have called it "book burning", and there are rising tensions between religious conservatives and gay-rights activists in the city-state.

Prominent local writer Ng Yi-Sheng said the NLB should have reached a "compromise solution, such as putting the books in adult lending or even the reference section", rather than destroying the books.

"I want you to bring up these book burnings in your public events," he told fellow authors in a Facebook post.

Alfian Sa'at, a playwright, called for a boycott of the NLB network. "Our stand is precise and clear: we are against censorship, an opaque bureaucracy and the destruction of books," he said.

A group of writers scheduled to speak at an NLB event about humour on Sunday also pulled out in protest.

The Singapore Review of Books, an online publication, said that the NLB's decision to destroy the books "has crossed the threshold to take on the spectre of a pyre... from which no hope may rise".

But Singapore's information minister Yaacob Ibrahim said in a Facebook post on Friday the NLB's decision was "guided by community norms".

"The prevailing norms, which the overwhelming majority of Singaporeans accept, support teaching children about conventional families, but not about alternative, non-traditional families, which is what the books in question are about," he wrote.

Sex between men is illegal in Singapore and is punishable by up to two years in jail under a provision in the penal code dating back to British colonial rule.

Although Singapore officials have openly promised that the city's gay community will not be hounded under this law, it has not been repealed because most citizens still do not accept homosexuality.

A survey of 4,000 citizens by the government-linked Institute of Policy Studies earlier this year found that 78.2 per cent of the local population believed same-sex relations were wrong.